“You might put it that way.”
“He said he had a friend foller’n him an’ he aimed to take that friend right through the middle of Apache country. Said he’d take him right back to Texas if he had the nerve to foller!”
Chick Bowdrie looked south and west. “I imagine he expected you’d tell me that. See you.”
He continued north, but now he rode with greater caution, avoiding skylines and studying country before trusting himself to cross open places. Off to the northwest there was a thin column of smoke. It was not a signal. Something was burning.
Bowdrie turned the roan toward it.
Venk, Bowdrie reflected, was a strange combination. He had rustled cattle, stolen horses, robbed banks, and had killed several men, most of them in gun battles. As to the killing that started Bowdrie on his trail when he shot the man off the horse, all the evidence was not in. There might be more to it than the cold-blooded killing it seemed to be.
He was shrewd and intelligent. He could be friendly, and he could be dangerous. He could smile right into your eyes and shoot you dead in your tracks. Whatever else he was, to ride into Apache country meant he had to be either a very brave man or a fool. Or both.
For Bowdrie to follow him was equally foolish. Yet Charlie thought he was playing his ace in taking the risk. Desperate the man might be, but he also knew something about Chick Bowdrie by now.
He could not shake Bowdrie from his trail. Venk had tried every ruse used in wild country. This would be his last attempt.
They were now in northern Arizona. It was the home country of the Mogollon and White Mountain Apache, a rough, broken country of mountains, cliffs, and canyons. Not many miles from here was a pine forest of considerable extent. Bowdrie would have to think and move carefully, for the Apaches were more to be feared than Venk.
Venk was no fool, and in saying he was returning to Texas, he might do just that. He might also weave a trail through raiding Apache bands, then circle back to pay another visit to Lucy Taylor. Lingering in this country was a foolhardy matter, but better to linger than to act and blunder.
TEN MILES AHEAD of Bowdrie was Charlie Venk. Always before he had been able to talk or laugh himself out of a situation or his skills had been great enough to elude pursuit. He now knew the identity of his pursuer, and he could not have missed knowing something about Bowdrie.
He could find no way of eluding his pursuer, and good with a gun as he was, he knew that in any gun battle many things might happen, and Bowdrie would not die easily. He might kill Bowdrie, but he might also be killed. And Charlie Venk loved life.
He was fresh out of tricks. Several times he believed he had lost the Ranger, but always Bowdrie worked out the trail and kept coming. It was getting on Venk’s nerves. He no longer felt like laughing. Twice lately he had awakened in a cold sweat, and he found himself looking over his shoulder constantly. Once he even shot into a shadow. He had not had a good night’s sleep in weeks.
Now he was riding into Apache country. There was no mercy in Charlie Venk. He was a good fellow as long as it cost him nothing. Could he have killed Bowdrie without danger to himself, he would have done it.
Nowhere in sight was there movement. Hot sun lay down the valley, but it was cool in the shade and the trail was visible for miles. Cicadas sang in the brush, and somewhere not far off a magpie fussed and worried over something. Charlie Venk needed rest, and this was as good a place as he was apt to find. He would just—
A brown arm slipped from behind and across his throat. Hands seized his arms and he was thrown to the ground. Other Apaches moved in, and he was a prisoner. His arms were bound, his guns taken away.
Blankly he stared into the cruel dark faces around him. He could talk, but his words would fall on unheeding ears. He could laugh, but they would not comprehend. His guns were gone, his muscles bound, his gift of tongue useless.
Charlie Venk stared into the sunlit afternoon realizing the heart-wrenching truth that he was through. He, the handsome, the strong, the ruthless, the untouchable. He who had ridden wild and free was trapped.
He was too wise in the ways of his country not to know what awaited him. Fiendish torture, burning, shot full of arrows or staked to an anthill.
CHICK BOWDRIE FOUND the spot where the capture took place, not two hours after Venk was taken. He found the stubs of three cigarettes, a confusion of tracks, mingled moccasins and boots. He found the trail that led away, several unshod horses and one shod. There was no blood on the ground. No stripped and mutilated body. Charlie Venk had been taken alive.
It was after nightfall when he found the Apache camp. His horse was tied in a thicket a half-mile away, and Bowdrie had changed to the moccasins he carried in his saddlebags. He was among the rocks overlooking the Apache camp.
Below him a fire blazed and he could see Venk tied to a tree whose top had been lopped off. As Chick watched, an Apache leaped up and rushed at Venk, striking him with a burning stick. Another followed, then another. This was preliminary; the really rough stuff was still to come. There were at least twenty Apaches down there, some of them women and children.
Bowdrie inched forward, measuring the risk against the possibilities. Coolly he lifted his Winchester. His mouth was dry, his stomach hollow with fear. Within seconds he would be in an all-out fight with the deadliest fighters known to warfare.
His greatest asset aside from his marksmanship was surprise. What he must do must be done within less than a minute.
He fired three times as fast as he could lever the shots. The range was point-blank. The first bullet was for a huge warrior who had jumped up and grabbed a stub of blazing wood and started for Venk. The bullet caught the Indian in mid-stride.
Bowdrie swung his rifle and another Apache dropped, a third staggered, then vanished into the darkness.
Instantly he was on his feet. If he was to free Venk, it must be done now! Once the panic inspired by the sudden attack was over, he would have no chance at all.
A move in the shadows warned him, and he fired. Venk was fighting desperately at the ropes that bound him. Behind the tree, Bowdrie could see the knot. He lifted the rifle and fired, heard the solid thunk of the bullet into the tree, and then, as he was cursing himself for his miss, he saw Venk spring away from the tree, fall, then roll into the shadows.
His bullet, aimed at the knot, had cut a strand of the rope!
The Apaches had believed themselves attacked by a number of men but would recover swiftly, realizing it could not be so. Warned by the fact that nobody had rushed the camp, they would be returning.
Bowdrie worked his way to where the horses were. He heard a sliding sound and a muffled gasp of pain.
“Venk?”
“Yeah.” The whisper was so soft he scarcely heard it. “And I got my guns!”
A bullet smashed a tree near them, but neither wasted a shot in reply. They were thinking only of the horses now. The Apaches would think of them also. Suddenly Venk lifted his pistol and shot in the direction of the horses. Bowdrie swore, but the shot struck an Indian reaching for the rope that tied them. Startled by the firing, the horses broke free and charged in a body.
Bowdrie had an instant to slip his arm and shoulder through the sling on his rifle, and then the horses were on them.
He sprang at the nearest horse. One hand gripped the mane and a leg went over the back. Outside camp they let the horses run, a few wild shots missing them by a distance. They circled until they could come to where Bowdrie’s horse was tied.
Daybreak found them miles away. Bowdrie glanced over at the big, powerfully muscled man lying on the ground near the gray horse. That it had once been a cavalry horse was obvious by the “US” stamped on the hip.
Naked to the waist, Venk’s body was covered by burns. There was one livid burn across his jaw.
Venk looked over at him. “If anybody had told me that could be done, I’d have said he was a liar!”
Venk had two guns belted on, and in his wild escape from c
amp he had grabbed up either his own or an Indian’s rifle.
“That was a tough one,” Bowdrie admitted.
“You Rangers always go that far to take a prisoner?”
“Of course,” Bowdrie said cheerfully, “I could have saved Texas a trial and a hanging or a long term in prison by just letting them have you.”
“I guess,” Venk suggested, “we’d better call it quits until we get back among folks. No use us fightin’ out here.”
Bowdrie shrugged. “What have we got to fight about? You’re my prisoner.”
“Determined cuss, aren’t you?” He put a cigarette in his mouth. “Oh, well! Have it your own way!” He took a twig from the fire to light his smoke; then he said, holding the twig in his fingers, “I might as well go back with you. You saved my life. Anyway—” he grinned—“I’d like to stop by and see that Lucy gal! Say, wasn’t she the—!”
He jumped and cried out as the twig burned down to his fingers, but as he jumped his hand dropped for his gun in a flashing draw!
The gun came up and Bowdrie shot him through the arm. Charlie Venk dropped his gun and sprang back, gripping his bloody arm. He stared unbelieving at Bowdrie.
“You beat me! You beat me!”
“I was all set for you, Charlie. I’ve used that trick myself.”
“Why didn’t you kill me? You could have.”
“You said you wanted to see Lucy again. Well, so do I. I’d hate to have to go back and tell her I buried you out here, Charlie.
“Now, you just unbuckle that belt and I’ll fix up that arm before you bleed to death. We’ve a long ride ahead of us.”
ABOUT LOUIS L’AMOUR
“I think of myself in the oral tradition—
as a troubadour, a village taleteller, the man
in the shadows of the campfire. That’s the way
I’d like to be remembered—as a storyteller.
A good storyteller.”
IT IS DOUBTFUL that any author could be as at home in the world re-created in his novels as Louis Dearborn L’Amour. Not only could he physically fill the boots of the rugged characters he wrote about, but he literally “walked the land my characters walk.” His personal experiences as well as his lifelong devotion to historical research combined to give Mr. L’Amour the unique knowledge and understanding of people, events, and the challenge of the American frontier that became the hallmarks of his popularity.
Of French-Irish descent, Mr. L’Amour could trace his own family in North America back to the early 1600s and follow their steady progression westward, “always on the frontier.” As a boy growing up in Jamestown, North Dakota, he absorbed all he could about his family’s frontier heritage, including the story of his great-grandfather who was scalped by Sioux warriors.
Spurred by an eager curiosity and desire to broaden his horizons, Mr. L’Amour left home at the age of fifteen and enjoyed a wide variety of jobs including seaman, lumberjack, elephant handler, skinner of dead cattle, miner, and an officer in the transportation corps during World War II. During his “yondering” days he also circled the world on a freighter, sailed a dhow on the Red Sea, was shipwrecked in the West Indies and stranded in the Mojave Desert. He won fifty-one of fifty-nine fights as a professional boxer and worked as a journalist and lecturer. He was a voracious reader and collector of rare books. His personal library contained 17,000 volumes.
Mr. L’Amour “wanted to write almost from the time I could talk.” After developing a widespread following for his many frontier and adventure stories written for fiction magazines, Mr. L’Amour published his first full-length novel, Hondo, in the United States in 1953. Every one of his more than 100 books is in print; there are more than 270 million copies of his books in print worldwide, making him one of the bestselling authors in modern literary history. His books have been translated into twenty languages, and more than forty-five of his novels and stories have been made into feature films and television movies.
His hardcover bestsellers include The Lonesome Gods, The Walking Drum (his twelfth-century historical novel), Jubal Sackett, Last of the Breed, and The Haunted Mesa. His memoir, Education of a Wandering Man, was a leading bestseller in 1989. Audio dramatizations and adaptations of many L’Amour stories are available on cassettes and CDs from Random House Audio publishing.
The recipient of many great honors and awards, in 1983 Mr. L’Amour became the first novelist ever to be awarded the Congressional Gold Medal by the United States Congress in honor of his life’s work. In 1984 he was also awarded the Medal of Freedom by President Reagan.
Louis L’Amour died on June 10, 1988. His wife, Kathy, and their two children, Beau and Angelique, carry the L’Amour tradition forward with new books written by the author during his lifetime to be published by Bantam.
Bantam Books by Louis L’Amour
ASK YOUR BOOKSELLER FOR THE BOOKS YOU HAVE MISSED.
NOVELS
Bendigo Shafter
Borden Chantry
Brionne
The Broken Gun
The Burning Hills
The Californios
Callaghen
Catlow
Chancy
The Cherokee Trail
Comstock Lode
Conagher
Crossfire Trail
Dark Canyon
Down the Long Hills
The Empty Land
Fair Blows the Wind
Fallon
The Ferguson Rifle
The First Fast Draw
Flint
Guns of the Timberlands
Hanging Woman Creek
The Haunted Mesa
Heller with a Gun
The High Graders
High Lonesome
Hondo
How the West Was Won
The Iron Marshal
The Key-Lock Man
Kid Rodelo
Kilkenny
Killoe
Kilrone
Kiowa Trail
Last of the Breed
Last Stand at Papago Wells
The Lonesome Gods
The Man Called Noon
The Man from Skibbereen
The Man from the Broken Hills
Matagorda
Milo Talon
The Mountain Valley War
North to the Rails
Over on the Dry Side
Passin’ Through
The Proving Trail
The Quick and the Dead
Radigan
Reilly’s Luck
The Rider of Lost Creek
Rivers West
The Shadow Riders
Shalako
Showdown at Yellow Butte
Silver Canyon
Sitka
Son of a Wanted Man
Taggart
The Tall Stranger
To Tame a Land
Tucker
Under the Sweetwater Rim
Utah Blaine
The Walking Drum
Westward the Tide
Where the Long Grass Blows
SHORT STORY
COLLECTIONS
Beyond the Great Snow Mountains
Bowdrie
Bowdrie’s Law
Buckskin Run
The Collected Short Stories of Louis L’Amour: The Frontier Stories, Volume One
Dutchman’s Flat
End of the Drive
The Hills of Homicide
Law of the Desert Born
Long Ride Home
Lonigan
May There Be a Road
Monument Rock
Night over the Solomons
Off the Mangrove Coast
The Outlaws of Mesquite
The Rider of the Ruby Hills
Riding for the Brand
The Strong Shall Live
The Trail to Crazy Man
Valley of the Sun
War Party
West from Singapore
West of Dodge
With These Hands
Yondering
SACKETT TITLES
Sackett’s Land
To the Far Blue Mountains
The Warrior’s Path
Jubal Sackett
Ride the River
The Daybreakers
Sackett
Lando
Mojave Crossing
Mustang Man
The Lonely Men
Galloway
Treasure Mountain
Lonely on the Mountain
Ride the Dark Trail
The Sackett Brand
The Sky-Liners
THE HOPALONG CASSIDY NOVELS
The Rustlers of West Fork
The Trail to Seven Pines
The Riders of High Rock
Trouble Shooter
NONFICTION
Education of a Wandering Man
Frontier
THE SACKETT COMPANION: A Personal Guide to the Sackett Novels
A TRAIL OF MEMORIES: The Quotations of Louis L’Amour, compiled by Angelique L’Amour
POETRY
Smoke from This Altar
BOWDRIE—TOUGH ENOUGH
JEST SET RIGHT still, Ranger. An’ keep both hands on the pommell.”
Chick Bowdrie swore softly. Too late now, he saw the two rifle barrels and they were pointed at him. It would be madness to move now. At that distance they could not miss.
Shad Tucker came out of the brush. Behind him was Buckeye Thomas. Thomas bared his yellow teeth. “The great Chick Bowdrie! Wal, Mr. Ranger, I reckon you got to be taught. I reckon so.”
Tucker gestured at the maze of canyons and rough country. “This here’s mine! You Rangers ain’t needed. We’ll just sort of make an example of you an’ leave what’s left for Rangers to find so they’ll know what’s comin’ to ’em if they come into my country.”
Tucker reached up and flipped Bowdrie’s guns from their holsters, then, grabbing him by the shirtfront, he jerked him from the saddle and threw a wicked punch to his belly.
“How d’you like it, Ranger? You think you’re tough, huh? Well, we’ll see.”
BOWDRIE’S LAW
A Bantam Book
PUBLISHING HISTORY
A Bantam Book / December 1984
Bantam reissue / December 1991